Friday, July 20, 2012

Today, we’re happy to announce two new updates from the YouTube for Good team to help you make the most out of your channel.

First, we’re kicking off monthly online trainings for members of the YouTube Nonprofit Program. These will be ‘101 level’ trainings - perfect for nonprofits who recently joined the program or are just getting started with a YouTube channel. The trainings, which will be conducted via Google+ Hangouts on Air, will take place at 9am PT on the last Tuesday of every month.

The first training will be at 9am PT on July 31, 2012. Here’s how to join:

DirectionsTo join in the conversation during our Hangout On Air:

Make sure you have a Google Account and Google+ profile or page setup.

This Hangout on Air will begin at 9am PT on July 31, 2012. Additional trainings will take place at 9am PT on the last Tuesday of every month.

Log onto Google+ and you'll see an invite to join the hangout in your notifications (upper right hand corner of the page in a red box). Click through to the conversation!

If the link is not available in your notifications, click the hangouts icon on the left hand side of the page and look for a hangout called "YouTube Nonprofits Introduction" among the hangouts available for you to join.

Second, we recently announced that we will allow YouTube users to link to a Change.org, Donorschoose.org, RocketHub or Causes page via a YouTube annotation. An annotation is a little dialogue box that pops up in a video and allows video creators to convey a message. In the past, these annotations were only able to link to a YouTube video, channel or search result. Now they can link to the four sites above, in addition to Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We’re excited to see how you use these new features to encourage audiences to sign petitions, take action and donate.

While some children spend their youth fascinated by model cars and legos, I was always more interested in aerial photography. For years I amassed a collection of books capturing this unique perspective of the world, and it was obvious from looking through my personal library that British aerial photographer Jason Hawkes was a huge influence and hero of mine. Last year, Jason came to the Google office in London to give a Tech Talk, and I was finally able to meet him in person. He mentioned being a big fan of Google Earth, using it to put together virtual flight plans for his trips.

After Jason’s visit, we decided to collaborate on an effort to bring geographic context to his work with Google Earth. By creating a KML file showcasing some of his most beautiful images, we were able to truly capture a “Hawkes eye view” of locations all around the world.

The English coastline, near Sittingbourne, Kent captured by Jason Hawkes

While Jason hails from the United Kingdom, his work spans the globe. Simply open the KML in Google Earth, and you’ll feel like you’ve taken a seat right next to him as he flies over the United Kingdom, New York, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Budapest and Minorca.

The Great Sphinx at Luxor in Las Vegas, Nevada

Given the excitement around London this summer, we included a variety of photographs that bring the changing face of the city to life, from the addition of The Shard skyscraper to the massive redevelopment taking place in Stratford for the Olympic games.

The Shard and River Thames in London, England

The Olympic Park in London, England

When viewing the KML in Google Earth, make sure the “3D Buildings” layer is enabled in the left hand panel to enjoy a 3D experience of famous buildings. Happy flying!

Today, more than a billion Muslims around the world begin to observe the holy month of Ramadan, fasting from dawn to sunset. This year, we’re bringing some of the most venerable Ramadan traditions online.

We’re sharing the Islamic prayers live from Mecca on a dedicated YouTube channel. Millions of people from around the world will be able to experience and comment on the event by tuning in via video.

Ramadan is about more than just prayer; it is also a special moment to gather with friends and family. Muslims gather to watch special television shows produced for the holiday and shown only during Ramadan. Often the shows overlap in scheduling. This year, for the first time, YouTube is enabling people to watch their favorite shows anytime, anywhere. A new YouTube Ramadan channel lets viewers see more than 50 premium Ramadan shows the same day they air. In the clip below, famed Syrian actor Jamal Suliman appears in a drama:

Ramadan’s tastiest tradition is the food. After fasting through the day, families gather for evening break-the-fast meals called Iftar. Through Google+ Hangouts, we’re hosting 30 virtual get-togethers in the 30 days of Ramadan, in which celebrity chefs will share their favorite recipes and doctors will give tips on eating healthy.

The hangouts will engage people in subjects far beyond eating. Actors will talk about their favorite Ramadan shows. Poets will discuss literature inspired by the holiday. Religious figures will answer questions. Stay tuned to the Google Arabia page on Google+ for more details and and join in.

With a growing number of searches happening on mobile devices, it's more important than ever to provide consumers with a positive mobile web experience when they click on your ads. We know that many of you are considering whether to build a mobile website or to use responsive design. Our friends at the Mobile Blog recently wrote about the differences between them, and how you can decide which is right for you.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

In 2011, the Google Earth Outreach team awarded a first round of Developer Grants to organizations with outstanding mapping ideas. These grants support the technical development of maps and enable nonprofits to implement cutting-edge mapping technology to make an impact on the world.

Visit the Google Earth Outreach website to learn more about this year’s Developer Grants program and make sure your organization is in an eligible country. The deadline to apply with your initial project proposal is August 1, 2012 at 11:59pm PST.

Whether you’re travelling abroad or exploring your own city, the maps you carry with you should be comprehensive, accurate and easy to use. We're constantly making improvements to Google Maps to help you find and discover places that are meaningful to you no matter where you are. And today, we’re launching updated maps of Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lesotho, Macau, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore and Vatican City to do just that.

As was the case for pastupdates, our new maps are more detailed and precise. For example, in Ireland we now have excellent coverage of National Heritage Areas, as well as more detailed coastlines and bodies of water:

We’ve also added more accurate names and locations for major points of interest, such as airports, universities and public squares. Here you can see St. Mark’s Square in Venice, now with accurately aligned canals, 3D buildings and detailed labels of the countless number of places to be discovered.

We’ve also added better and more clearly labelled ferry routes in many places, such as the area below surrounding Naples, Italy. Traveling by ferry is one of my favorite ways to explore a city—I love looking back from the water at the cityscapes—and this improvement will help you find the ferry routes you need to do the same. You can even use Google Maps to get transit-based directions for ferries. We take into account ferry timetables to route you over water just easily as you might follow our driving directions over land.

In addition to the above changes, local roads on these maps are now more accurately distinguished from highways, and multi-lingual names are available for a larger proportion of roads in many of the updated countries. These improvements give you a better visual feel of the location, as well as make it easier to navigate the area when you're on the ground.

Of course, the world around us is always changing, so we’re making our “Report a problem” tool available in each of these countries as well. You can use it to send us a description of any corrections to be made, which we then incorporate into our maps, often within days.

Today’s improvements follow the recent expansion of our collection of Antarctic imagery, and are part of our ongoing effort to build maps that are comprehensive, accurate and easy to use. We've partnered with numerous authoritative sources to ensure that Google Maps is a living reflection of every corner of the globe. After all, a map is only as good as the data behind it. The maps that we've built will help ensure that you get correct and up-to-date information about the world around you.

Vidcon 2012 was a true celebration of our creators and the ways they’re making the world a more interesting, inspiring and entertaining place. Our creators have amassed colossal audiences, invented new genres of entertainment, built global brands that transcend media, and are reaching new milestones every day. Simply put, their channels are taking over the world. We recently made it easier than ever for more creators to earn revenue from their videos and become YouTube partners, resulting in over 1 million channels on YouTube now part of the partner program. As we expand the partner base, we want to recognize and celebrate the partners that have hit big milestones by officially rolling out YouTube Partner Rewards.

The channels receiving YouTube Partner Rewards have surpassed 500 million subscribers and 251 BILLION views (or 36 views for each person on Earth). Want to know if your favorite channels are in the mix? Find out and learn more about the YouTube Partner Rewards program atyoutube.com/partnerrewards.

To celebrate, we’re rewarding any channel that surpasses 1 million subscribers with one of these beauties:

That’s right. A gold-plated PLAY button to hang in your studio, office, or home. Initially, nearly 80 channels (from EpicMealTime to Ellen DeGeneres, Mondo Media to the Biebs, Michelle Phan to Katy Perry and many more!)will be receiving this award in addition to a super-nifty YouTube branded gift card to use toward video equipment and a limited edition camera case. The more than 1,400 channels that have surpassed 100,000 subscribers will also receive the $500 gift card and camera case to help them on their way to 1 million subscribers.

We’ll continue to recognize channels with YouTube Partner Rewards on a regular basis, so be sure to subscribe to your favorite channels to help them hit their first million and get their own gold-plated play button.

From all of us at YouTube, congratulations to the first recipients - it’s amazing what you’ve accomplished, and we can’t wait to see what you all do next!

This morning, in partnership with the Tate Modern in London, we released an online art experiment called This Exquisite Forest, which lets you collaborate with others to create animations and stories using a web-based drawing tool.

Seven renowned artists from Tate’s collection, including Bill Woodrow, Dryden Goodwin, Julian Opie, Mark Titchner, Miroslaw Balka, Olafur Eliasson and Raqib Shaw, have created short “seed” animations. From these seeds, anyone can add new animations that extend the story or branch it in a new direction. Or you can start a tree of your own with some friends. As more sequences are added, the animations grow into trees, creating a potentially infinite number of possible endings to each animation.

In addition to the website, an interactive installation will open on July 23 in the Level 3 gallery of Tate Modern. Trees seeded by Tate artists—and the contributions from the public—will be on display as large-scale projections. Gallery visitors may also contribute using digital drawing stations.

This Exquisite Forest uses several of Google Chrome’s advanced HTML5 and JavaScript features to produce a unique content creation and exploration experience. For example, the Web Audio API makes it possible for contributors to generate music to accompany their submissions. The project also runs on Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage.

Please try it out at ExquisiteForest.com and contribute your own animation to help the forest grow.

This morning, in partnership with the Tate Modern in London, we released an online art experiment called This Exquisite Forest, which lets you collaborate with others to create animations and stories using a web-based drawing tool.

Seven renowned artists from Tate’s collection, including Bill Woodrow, Dryden Goodwin, Julian Opie, Mark Titchner, Miroslaw Balka, Olafur Eliasson and Raqib Shaw, have created short “seed” animations. From these seeds, anyone can add new animations that extend the story or branch it in a new direction. Or you can start a tree of your own with some friends. As more sequences are added, the animations grow into trees, creating a potentially infinite number of possible endings to each animation.

In addition to the website, an interactive installation will open on July 23 in the Level 3 gallery of Tate Modern. Trees seeded by Tate artists—and the contributions from the public—will be on display as large-scale projections. Gallery visitors may also contribute using digital drawing stations.

This Exquisite Forest uses several of Google Chrome’s advanced HTML5 and JavaScript features to produce a unique content creation and exploration experience. For example, the Web Audio API makes it possible for contributors to generate music to accompany their submissions. The project also runs on Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage.

Please try it out at ExquisiteForest.com and contribute your own animation to help the forest grow.

Whether you’re travelling abroad or exploring your own city, the maps you carry with you should be comprehensive, accurate and easy to use. We're constantly making improvements to Google Maps to help you find and discover places that are meaningful to you no matter where you are. And today, we’re launching updated maps of Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lesotho, Macau, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore and Vatican City to do just that.

As was the case for pastupdates, our new maps are more detailed and precise. For example, in Ireland we now have excellent coverage of National Heritage Areas, as well as more detailed coastlines and bodies of water:

We’ve also added more accurate names and locations for major points of interest, such as airports, universities and public squares. Here you can see St. Mark’s Square in Venice, now with accurately aligned canals, 3D buildings and detailed labels of the countless number of places to be discovered.

We’ve also added better and more clearly labelled ferry routes in many places, such as the area below surrounding Naples, Italy. Traveling by ferry is one of my favorite ways to explore a city—I love looking back from the water at the cityscapes—and this improvement will help you find the ferry routes you need to do the same. You can even use Google Maps to get transit-based directions for ferries. We take into account ferry timetables to route you over water just easily as you might follow our driving directions over land.

In addition to the above changes, local roads on these maps are now more accurately distinguished from highways, and multi-lingual names are available for a larger proportion of roads in many of the updated countries. These improvements give you a better visual feel of the location, as well as make it easier to navigate the area when you're on the ground.

Of course, the world around us is always changing, so we’re making our “Report a problem” tool available in each of these countries as well. You can use it to send us a description of any corrections to be made, which we then incorporate into our maps, often within days.

Today’s improvements follow the recent expansion of our collection of Antarctic imagery, and are part of our ongoing effort to build maps that are comprehensive, accurate and easy to use. We've partnered with numerous authoritative sources to ensure that Google Maps is a living reflection of every corner of the globe. After all, a map is only as good as the data behind it. The maps that we've built will help ensure that you get correct and up-to-date information about the world around you.

As more of your competitors Go Mo, building a mobile-friendly site becomes more of a priority for your business. Over the past two years alone, mobile search traffic has increased five-fold. Customers are searching for your business from their mobile phones, and you need to engage them with a mobile experience designed for completing on-the-go tasks from their small screens. Recently many businesses have been asking us about an emerging trend among web developers—responsive design—and if they should use it. While we believe that building a separate mobile website is an appropriate solution for certain businesses, it’s also important to understand how responsive design might fit into your plans to Go Mo.

What is responsive design? It is a website design technique that allows you to create a single website that will adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet. A site built with responsive design will automatically resize for different devices, but it is up to you to prioritize the content that matters most to the mobile user. For example, a mobile user might need to quickly find your phone number or directions, whereas a tablet user might want a simpler way to make couch-surfing purchases. A site built using responsive design could prioritize click-to-call and click-to-map buttons, while the tablet site would focus on simplifying the shopping cart. For the technical details on how responsive design works for building mobile-friendly sites, read this blog post from the Google webmaster team.

So how do I know if I should build a separate mobile website or use responsive design? Here are some guidelines to help you decide what makes sense for your business:

If I decide responsive design is a better fit for my business, do I have to build my site from scratch?Not necessarily. A sophisticated web developer might be able to adapt an existing site with responsive design, but there will still be costs in terms of time and budget.

Will a site built with responsive design have more than one URL?No. A site built with responsive design will have the same URL for desktop, mobile and tablets. When building a separate mobile optimized site, typically there is a different mobile URL, but the users will be taken there automatically as long as your desktop site is enabled with the auto redirect code.

How much does it cost to use responsive design for mobile?Prices vary across developers and agencies. We recommend reaching out to a developer and/or agency for help on getting started.

Responsive design can definitely minimize long term maintenance of your site, but many businesses can effectively connect with their customers with a separate mobile-friendly site. If you have the technical resources and a clear business need, then responsive design is a more advanced way to make your site mobile-friendly. No matter how you go about it, you need to ensure you are designing for mobile first, and engaging your customers when they're using their mobile phones to search for your business.

For additional resources on the value of mobile, testing your site and finding developers to help you build your mobile-friendly site, visit howtogomo.com.

Today we bring you a guest post from the mother of a 10 year-old autistic YouTube partner, whose life changed dramatically when he took his passion for science online.

I want to introduce you all to my son Jordan, known as Doctor Mad Science to his legion of YouTube fans.

When he was 18 months old, Jordan was diagnosed as severely autistic. He exhibited behaviors like head banging, flapping and fits. It wasn't until he turned five that he started to speak, using just one or two words. At the time I wondered if he would ever be able to have a conversation, go to school, or make a friend. As a mom, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep you up at night.

But, through it all, one things was clear: Jordan LOVED science. Especially the kind of science that involved raiding the cupboards and turning our kitchen counter into a DIY laboratory! About a year ago, he started posting these household experiments on YouTube. And that’s when something changed. Jordan’s confidence grew, his speech started to improve and kids at school wanted to be a part of his videos. While building his online persona, Jordan was suddenly making friends in the real world.

Autism will always challenge Jordan, but I’ve learned it doesn’t have to define him. Today, he’s a ten year-old chatterbox, and (when he’s not getting into trouble with his friends) he continues to explore the world of science on YouTube to share with all of you. As for me? I’m sleeping better these days with my very own Doctor Mad Science in the house.

Inspiration comes in many forms and can influence you in unexpected ways. I can trace my own interest in programming to Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which fascinated me on my childhood visits to the Science Museum in London.

This idea that science and technology can inspire people is one that we hold close to our hearts. It’s also the thought behind a new exhibition we’re launching today online and at the Science Museum in London. We hope to inspire people around the world by showcasing the magic that the Internet makes possible.

Launching in beta, Web Lab is a set of five physical installations housed in the Science Museum in London. You can interact with them in person at the museum, or from anywhere in the world at chromeweblab.com. By opening up the museum experience to the world online, Web Lab doesn’t play by the usual rules—a visitor’s location and museum opening hours no longer matter.

Each of the five experiments—Universal Orchestra, Data Tracer, Sketchbots, Teleporter and Lab Tag Explorer—showcases a modern web technology found in Chrome to explore a particular theme in computer science. For example, the Universal Orchestra experiment uses WebSockets to demonstrate real time collaboration as people from around the world make music together on custom-built robotic instruments housed in the Science Museum.

Please join us online or at the Science Museum in London (entry is free), and let us know what you think. True to its name, the year-long exhibition is a working lab, and we’ll continue to tinker with it based on your feedback.

Here’s to the next wave of Internet invention!

Posted by Jayme Goldstein, Product Marketing Manager, Chrome, on behalf of the Web Lab team

YouTube is proud to be a place where citizens and activists come to tell their stories -- stories that may otherwise go unnoticed. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that YouTube is a top destination for news and that “citizens play a substantial role in supplying and producing footage.”

But this level of exposure can be risky to the citizens shooting the footage and the people who appear in their videos.

Of course, anonymity is never a guarantee, and people who capture sensitive video footage should consider taking other precautions to keep themselves and their subjects safe. Here are three suggestions:

1. Assess your risk. You and the people you film may face risk by posting video online. You may risk your own safety and that of your subjects while filming sensitive footage, during the editing process, and when you distribute your film online. After assessing the vulnerability you and your subjects face, you can make more informed decisions about when to film, whether to distribute your footage, and how widely you want to share it.

2. Consider other information which may give away identity. Video footage of your face is not the only way someone can detect your identity. Other factors that may be caught on video can also identify you or your subjects. Watch out for vocal identifiers, like recognizable voices or saying someone’s name on camera. Other footage can give away identity like a license plate, a name tag, or even the background scenery. Make sure that the imagery in your videos does not give away information about your location or identity.

3. Protect yourself when uploading. Consider, for example, local laws that may allow authorities to track the mobile device from which you upload. In certain countries, merely purchasing a sim card puts users at risk of tracking by government.

Over the past seven years, YouTube has evolved into a destination for citizen reporting. Along with curating projects like the Human Rights Channel and CitizenTube, we hope that the new technologies we’re rolling out will facilitate the sharing of even more stories on our platform.

Inspiration comes in many forms and can influence you in unexpected ways. I can trace my own interest in programming to Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which fascinated me on my childhood visits to the Science Museum in London.

This idea that science and technology can inspire people is one that we hold close to our hearts. It’s also the thought behind a new exhibition we’re launching today online and at the Science Museum in London. We hope to inspire people around the world by showcasing the magic that the Internet makes possible.

Launching in beta, Web Lab is a set of five physical installations housed in the Science Museum in London. You can interact with them in person at the museum, or from anywhere in the world at chromeweblab.com. By opening up the museum experience to the world online, Web Lab doesn’t play by the usual rules—a visitor’s location and museum opening hours no longer matter.

Each of the five experiments—Universal Orchestra, Data Tracer, Sketchbots, Teleporter and Lab Tag Explorer—showcases a modern web technology found in Chrome to explore a particular theme in computer science. For example, the Universal Orchestra experiment uses WebSockets to demonstrate real time collaboration as people from around the world make music together on custom-built robotic instruments housed in the Science Museum.

Please join us online or at the Science Museum in London (entry is free), and let us know what you think. True to its name, the year-long exhibition is a working lab, and we’ll continue to tinker with it based on your feedback.

Here’s to the next wave of Internet invention!

Posted by Jayme Goldstein, Product Marketing Manager, Chrome, on behalf of the Web Lab team

Google Analytics users are a digitally savvy bunch. As such we’re lucky to have a passionate community of marketers, analysts and developers that follow us across social platforms. Thousands of you read our blog posts, Tweets, and Google+ updates daily and we always use engagement data to refine what we share (and how we share it).

However, in social numbers are best paired with qualitative feedback and understanding more about who you, our most passionate users are. That’s why for the first time we’re taking feedback directly from you on how we can make our social participation even more useful.

Want more tips? More trends and opinion pieces? Video guides? Let us know and we’ll try and fulfill it.

In the winter of 1913, a British newspaper ran an advertisement to promote the latest imperial expedition to Antarctica, apparently placed by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. It read, "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success." While the ad appears apocryphal, the dangerous nature of the journey to the South Pole is certainly not—as explorers like Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Shackleton himself discovered as they tried to become the first men to reach it.

Back in September 2010, we launched the first Street View imagery of the Antarctic, enabling people from more habitable lands to see penguins in Antarctica for the first time. Today we’re bringing you additional panoramic imagery of historic Antarctic locations that you can view from the comfort of your homes. We’ll be posting this special collection to our World Wonders site, where you can learn more about the history of South Pole exploration.

The interior of Shackleton’s Hut demonstrates the host of supplies used in early 20th century Antarctic expeditions—everything from medicine and food to candles and cargo sleds can be found neatly stored inside. (View Larger Map)

With this technology, you can go inside places like Shackleton’s Hut (pictured above) and the other small wooden buildings that served as bases from which the explorers launched their expeditions. They were built to withstand the drastic weather conditions only for the few short years that the explorers inhabited them, but remarkably, after more than a century, the structures are still intact, along with well-preserved examples of the food, medicine, survival gear and equipment used during the expeditions. Now anyone can explore these huts and get insight into how these men lived for months at a time.

The landscape outside of Robert Falcon Scott’s supply hut conveys just how desolate the area is. For these early explorers, the supply huts were an oasis of warmth and comfort in a cold and inhospitable landscape. (View Larger Map)

This new imagery was collected with a lightweight tripod camera with a fisheye lens—equipment typically used to capture business interiors through the Business Photos program. We worked with this technology because of its portability, reliability and ease-of-use (our Street View trikes wouldn’t be much use in the snow).

The goal of these efforts is to provide scientists and travel (or penguin) enthusiasts all over the world with the most accurate, high-resolution data of these important historic locations. With this access, schoolchildren as far as Bangalore can count penguin colonies on Snow Hill Island, and geologists in Georgia can trace sedimentary layers in the Dry Valleys from the comfort of their desks. Feel free to leave your boots and mittens behind, and embark on a trip to Antarctica.

Need to give AdSense account access to a business partner because you manage the account together? Today, we’re happy to let you know that this top-requested feature has been added to the AdSense interface.

From now on, you can invite trusted colleagues or partners to sign in to your AdSense account and also run reports, manage payment information, and generate ad code. In addition, this new user management feature can also be used to change the Google Account login linked to an AdSense account.

We currently support two types of users on an account: Administrator and Standard user. Both types of users have full access to the AdSense interface, but only Administrators can add or remove users. As a publisher with an approved account, your access level for your account has now been set to ‘Administrator’. You can invite other people to access your account, designate them as Administrators or Standard users, and later change these settings if needed.

Please note that when another person is invited to access an AdSense account, they’ll need to use a verified Google Account login that isn’t linked to any other AdSense account or application. In addition, please be aware that Google AdSense is unable to mediate access disputes between users. As a result, we recommend exercising caution when sharing account access.

While Google Apps for Business is built for simplicity, many businesses and organizations have found a way to go beyond the basics with Google Apps. How? These companies have taken advantage of the expertise of a Google Apps Reseller. Google Apps Resellers have invested people, time, and resources into becoming an expert on and providing specialized services for Google Apps – so you don’t have to.

And more, including support, network and security management, and building Google Sites

This community has grown to over 6,000 resellers, serving businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions around the world. Our resellers have always been the trusted face of your relationship with Google Apps, managing everything from billing to your support needs. Within the community is a set of Google Apps Premier Resellers. These experts have proven an exceptional level of success helping Google Apps customers, and they have staff who are officially certified in deploying Google Apps. We named one Premier Reseller, Cloud Sherpas, Partner of the Year earlier this year for their track record and strong customer references.

Want to get connected with a Google Apps expert? Let us know and we’ll put you in touch.

As citizens continue to play a critical role in supplying news and human rights footage from around the world, YouTube is committed to creating even better tools to help them. According to the international human rights organization WITNESS’ Cameras Everywhere report, “No video-sharing site or hardware manufacturer currently offers users the option to blur faces or protect identity.”

YouTube is excited to be among the first.

Today we're launching face blurring - a new tool that allows you to obscure faces within videos with the click of a button.

Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s basketball game without broadcasting the children’s faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube.

Blurring faces on YouTube is simple. Once you’ve chosen the video that you’d like to edit within our Video Enhancements tool, go to Additional Features and click the “Apply” button below Blur All Faces. Before you publish, you will see a preview of what your video will look like with faces blurred. When you save the changes to your video, a new copy is created with the blurred faces. You will then be given the option to delete the original video.

This is emerging technology, which means it sometimes has difficulty detecting faces depending on the angle, lighting, obstructions and video quality. It’s possible that certain faces or frames will not be blurred. If you are not satisfied with the accuracy of the blurring as you see it in the preview, you may wish to keep your video private.

Visual anonymity in video allows people to share personal footage more widely and to speak out when they otherwise may not.

YouTube is proud to be a destination where people worldwide come to share their stories, including activists. Along with efforts like the Human Rights Channel and Citizentube that curate these voices, we hope that the new technologies we’re rolling out will facilitate the sharing of even more stories on our platform.